[Dixielandjazz] Cage's 639 Year Composition Changes a Note

[Steve barbone]

Damn, Bill Gunter and I missed the chord change. :-) VBG.

Never fear, for those who subscribe to the NY Times on line can view an
audible slide show of this momentous event.

Is this jazz? We may find out on July 5, 2008 when the next chord change
occurs. How about a F2F in Halberstadt then?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


NY TIMES - By DANIEL J. WAKIN - May 6, 2006

John Cage's Long Music Composition in Germany Changes a Note

HALBERSTADT, Germany, May 5 ‹ "Three, two, one, out!" With those words, two
organ pipes were lifted from their position on Friday. Like a sudden change
in light, the chord that had been continuously sounding inside an ancient
church here shifted, growing thinner and higher.

It was another milestone ‹ well, inchstone ‹ in the performance of
"Organ2/ASLSP," a version of the John Cage composition titled "As Slow as
Possible." And slow means slow. The piece, which began on Sept. 5, 2001, is
not scheduled to end until 2640. But there will probably be a break after
the first movement, which lasts a mere 71 years.

On a beautiful spring day, more than 100 people gathered inside St.
Burchardi Church in what has become something of a ritual every year or so,
when a chord changes. They snapped pictures and held tape recorders as a
local government official, Rainer Robra, and a German composer, Peter
Schnebel, grasped the pipes, which were sounding octave E's, and lifted them
out of the organ frame at 3:49 p.m. People applauded. Mr. Robra bowed, then
posed with his pipe.

Meanwhile, an electric bellows continued to pump air into the organ. Small
bags of sand held down the organ's three keys, which controlled four other
pipes. They continued to sound, filling the space inside the church's bare
ruined walls with a sound somewhere between a hum and a squeal.

The next chord change will come on July 5, 2008. (Until then, for those
interested, the chord consists of G sharp, F sharp, C and A, in descending
order.) All changes occur on the fifth day of the month, in honor of Cage's
birthday, Sept. 5. Pipes will be added or subtracted as needed, although
some of the project's backers dream about building a whole organ one day.

"We love the event because it's so brilliantly funny," said Jens Frohling,
38, a bank employee who had come from Frankfurt to this town about 110 miles
southwest of Berlin. He said government officials had been trying, without
great success, to draw visitors to eastern Germany. "So why not this?" he
said. "I think it worked."

Hans-Georg Busch, a former mayor who said he planned to run again next year,
was also on hand. He said he was not enamored of Cage's music, but he
thought the performance exciting all the same. "It's avant-garde," he said.

The performance is in keeping with Cage's efforts to explore the boundaries
of performance and how music exists in time and space. The change of notes
prompted philosophical musings among some listeners, many of whom lingered
for more than an hour after the chord change.

"It brought back the idea about time, and how time's changed," said Frank
Edelkraut, 47, of Hamburg. Others compared it to cathedral-building.

"It's sort of like in the Middle Ages, when the people building the
foundations of those really big churches knew they would not be able to
finish the church," said Werner Kuhlemann, 53, of Hildesheim, a town about
an hour away by car.

The chord change was accompanied by a slate of cultural activities.
Officials held a news conference to inaugurate the John Cage Academy, a
center for new music that will be housed in a building next door within the
former Cistercian monastery. A photography exhibit was held there, followed
by a concert of Mr. Schnebel's music later in the evening at the cathedral.

The academy's first event is a symposium, likely to take place in 2008, with
the subject, appropriately, the nature of time.

Money for the project and the academy is tight. The government declined to
provide funds, and the organizers depend on small contributions. Plaques
inside the church honor those who have sponsored a performance year. An
anonymous donor dedicated the first, 2000, to Johann Sebastian Bach. Henning
and Inger Bergenholtz went for 2024, which will be the year of their 50th
wedding anniversary.

Halberstadt, a once-thriving town that was flattened in World War II and
left to molder under the East German authorities, is struggling to bounce
back from economic woes unification has brought on the east. Restoration
money has poured in. The area also has a problem with skinheads.

Yet like many German towns, Halberstadt takes its culture seriously. The
municipal theater puts on more than 500 opera, symphony, theatrical and
dance performances a year. The town has a magnificent cathedral, with a
concert series, and a handful of museums, including one dedicated to Johann
Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, an 18th-century poet and minor Enlightenment figure
who lived here. After Friday, John Cage, who was influential on Germany's
postwar music scene, appeared to be more firmly in the club.

Along with the church, Halberstadt also provided the piece's duration. The
cathedral was said to have had the first organ with a modern keyboard
arrangement, built in 1361. That year subtracted from 2000 yields 639, the
number of years of the Cage performance.

Sarah Plass contributed reporting from Halberstadt for this article.